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Ethel and Gracie were abused by their college roommate who allegedly kicked them, stepped on them and threw them against the wall. They suffered broken legs, ribs and vertebrae.

Chris and Tara Palaski got them medical care, took them into their Greensburg home while they recovered and showed them what it's like to be wanted and loved. Their names were changed to Faith and Hope, and they have since been adopted.

They are ferrets, and they are among the lucky ones who find good homes when their owners can't or won't take care of them. Many others are euthanized because animal shelters are not equipped to handle them. But the Palaskis are. They've had their own ferrets since 1992, and for the last five years they've operated the Westmoreland County Ferret Rescue Association.

"We realized there was a need for a place for them to go when their owners didn't want them anymore," Tara Palaski said.

The fate of other exotic pets, wildlife and even common guinea pigs is the concern of a handful of area animal lovers who run specialized shelters.

Adoption is the goal for the ferrets, which are in the same family as weasels, otters and minks. Tara Palaski compares their curious, energetic and playful personalities to kittens.

While those traits are endearing to people who know what to expect, they may also be behind failed relationships.

"Ferrets are so curious that they get into a lot of trouble because they're able to climb and jump, and they can fit into small spaces," Tara Palaski said. "So you have to ferret-proof wherever they play to keep them safe. It's like having a 2-year-old with fur that never grows up."

They also need a lot of attention and training, which is something that inexperienced owners may not anticipate. "People can be very misinformed about ferrets, and the animals come to us because they are neglected or sick," Chris Palaski said. "But the case of Hope and Faith was outright abuse."

Hope was so injured that she couldn't walk at all. She still has neurological problems and has difficultly walking straight and judging distances.

Jester was turned in by a concerned neighbor who saw that he was kept in a hot metal shed without food and water.

"He was very thin and malnourished, and there was internal damage from what he was eating," Chris Palaski said. "Despite our best efforts, he did pass away about two months after he came in. That's one of our sadder stories."

Most have happier endings thanks to the dedication of volunteers from as far away as West Virginia and Columbus, Ohio.

They help the Palaskis with cleaning, feeding and training the ferrets with social skills that make them affectionate and gentle.

"Ferrets are very intelligent, and they learn quickly," Chris Palaski said. "We had some that were such horrible biters that they bit through the bone. That's because they were hurt or were food-aggressive. As we go through the process of trying to rehabilitate a behavior issue, we really bond with them. We've never had a single ferret that could not be rehabilitated into a pet."

The adoption process requires an application, references, two visits to the shelter and a contract agreeing to return the ferret if the adoption fails.

The Palaskis will provide advice to pet store staffs and prospective ferret owners.

"It's the responsibility of the owner to raise them properly by socializing them and putting down boundaries for behavior," Tara Palaski said. "It's like a puppy - a baby ferret not trained will not grow up to be a good pet."

While ferrets are fun, full of energy and amusing, that's not necessarily true about snakes. That's one reason that some people abandon them.

"They get tired of feeding them because `all it does is just sit there,'" said Dolly Ellerbrock, president of the Pittsburgh Herpetological Society who rescues reptiles. "What do you expect a snake to do? They basically just sit there and watch things."

She hears many other excuses: The reptile has outgrown its cage, and new equipment is too expensive; keeping a light on for heat increases the electric bill; the animal got angry and attacked someone; or the kids went off to college and left it behind. That goes for iguanas and other lizards, too.

"People buy these cute and sweet little animals from the pet store, and they don't realize that they're going to grow up. When it grows and you (still) keep it in a 10-gallon tank, it's going to get mean," Ellerbrock said.

Members take in alligators that grew to an unmanageable size ... or because of improper care ... or because their tanks smelled bad. They get iguanas that were aggressive during breeding season, and other reptiles that are sick or injured. One iguana had chemical burns on 70 percent of its body.

"The owners thought they could get rid of mites with bleach and flea dip," Ellerbrock said. "They took it to the vet to be put down, but the vet saved its life."

Some members of the Pittsburgh Herpetological Society are partial to rescuing pythons, while others prefer lizards or turtles. One has 20 tortoises that are so big that they have to be moved around in a wheelbarrow.

"We get about five calls a day, and I am never surprised," Ellerbrock said. "The last was from someone in Maryland who was desperate to place a tortoise that weighed about 25 pounds. He was willing to drive to Pittsburgh to find it a home, but we found a rescue group in Maryland."

A woman from Seattle didn't call to get rid of a turtle. Her late grandmother, who lived in Pennsylvania, willed the reptile to her, and she wanted to take it home.

"She had played with that turtle when she was a little girl," said Ellerbrock, who helped locate an airline that could transport it.

The turtle heir is in for a long relationship because the animal can live to be 100. Iguanas may live well beyond a dozen years, and some other reptiles have life spans that last for decades. That's another reason that some people abandon them. "They don't realize how long they can live, and they just get tired of them," Ellerbrock said.

The cuteness factor may also play a part.

"It's sometimes the pretty ones that get to stay and have a home," she said. "It's the ones that people think are ugly that get tossed away."

That can't be true about guinea pigs, which are always cute. Yet Margaret Raphael of Ooohmahnee Farms in Hunker has an entire building for 60 of the unwanted rodents.

"People usually get them for pets, and the child loses interest, and it ends up languishing in a cage forever," she said. "Then they think if they take it to a shelter, it will get a new home. More often than not, the guinea pig is euthanized."

Raphael and her daughter Cayce Mell founded Ooohmahnee Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit agency, in the mid-1990s. They rescue abused, neglected or unwanted livestock and allow the animals to live out their natural lives on the farm.

Raphael grows organic produce to support their project. When they built a bigger greenhouse, the old one was converted to a three-level guinea pig shelter with an outside addition. That habitat gives the animals the rare lifestyle of living in a colony and going outdoors.

It's been a learning experience for Raphael and interested veterinarians. The facility not only makes Raphael one of the biggest guinea pig rescuers in the eastern United States, but the colony also produces some illnesses that many animal specialists have not seen. One illness, spread by mites on mice, puts guinea pigs under stress.

"When they go into such a stressful state, their organs start to shut down," Raphael said. "So we had to figure out how to treat this mite problem."

She has learned a lot about guinea pigs' social behavior in a colony, too.

"Guinea pigs spend a lot of time interacting with each other in very interesting ways," she said. "One was very ill after a mite infestation and had scratched large patches of skin to being raw and bleeding. I watched the others sort of caring for him and cleaning the wounds."

Another guinea pig stayed close to an older one that was blind and remained at her side until she died.

"When you see them engaging with each other with this sensitivity and empathy, it sheds a whole new light on them," Raphael said. "There's a lot of playfulness, companionship and interaction that you would not see if they were living in isolation."

The unwanted guinea pigs come from all over the region and even out of state. They include every breed and color - from short hair and white, to long hair and multicolored. They are not available for adoption.

"Why would I want them to live in a cage?" Raphael said. "This is guinea pig heaven."

The farm's 38 Vietnamese pot belly pigs aren't going anywhere, either. Raphael already rescued them from homes where they shouldn't have been in the first place.

"They once were considered exotic house pets, and they originally cost upwards of $1,000," she said.

Popularity increased when prices dropped, but that didn't change the pigs' biggest drawback as house pets - they can weigh as much 200 pounds. And their natural instinct to "root" destroys furniture and carpets.

Wildlife shouldn't be in homes, either, and it's also against the law to keep some species.

Beth Shoaf of Wildlife Works Inc. in Youngwood rehabilitates injured or orphaned wild animals before releasing them. Since 1991 she and other volunteers have worked with "everything from hawks to hummingbirds, to skunks and everything else in between." They see more songbirds and baby cottontail rabbits than anything else, and seasonally, they rescue domestic waterfowl.

"They are abandoned by people who get them for Easter pets, and they turn out not so cute and fuzzy anymore," Shoaf said. "Then they go and release them in the wild, but they don't belong in the wild."

Some of the ducks and geese are adopted by people with lakes and ponds. The rest remain at the refuge and they, like other pets who are lucky enough to be rescued, will never be abandoned again.

For more information on ferret rescues visit www.ferretrescue.com; reptile rescues, trfn.clpgh.org/phs; or call Wildlife Works Inc. at 724-925-6862.

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